I'm really not sure exactly what you're asking for, are you asking for technique tips to help you improve or ideas for making yourself sound more like MAB musically?

Also: electric metronome, they're more precise. Metronomes are important for giving you an external reference of time, they're not as important for improving pure technique as a lot of people make them out to be.

Gear is exactly as important as you want it to be; you should use exactly what you need to make the sound you hear in your head, if that means using a strat and a YJM signature amp then so be it.

__________________
R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

Metronome practice is important, but tone comes 90% from your fingers, so focus on getting a good sound out of the best quality equipment that you can afford. Study the nuances of guitarists that you like and try to incorporate that in your playing. Don't worry too much about speed and tempos, it could hinder your musicality and will happen of it's own accord the more you play

How important is a metronome? Would you guys recommend an electric metronome or an actual one?

Personally, I like to use electronic metronomes or a computerized metronome. I also really like to use GuitarPro and Tux Guitar's "Training Mode" for practicing bursts of speed.

Quote:

Also, how important is gear? I'm currently gasing for a Marshall YJM100 and a Strat of some sort, however I don't want to be just another Yngwie clone.

Gear is as important as you make it, to shamelessly steal a line from Zaph.

I play a black Ibanez ERG through PodFarm, but that doesn't make me a Tosin Abasi clone (though that'd be pretty sweet). Gear doesn't make the man. I've played Kirk Hammet sigs without ever sounding like Metallica. I've dicked around on Les Pauls and don't sound like most of the big names who play Les Pauls. I sound like me. If you have a distinctive style, that'll come through regardless of what you're playing on.

Tape up your nips and chain-saw a guitar in half....Wendy O. Williams.

Oh, don't forget girl's clothes... Always flamboyant.

I saw Wendy O, but I thought she chainsawed old TVs. Ive forgotten the name of the band though. Didn't want to cheat by googling it. Hm, maybe she started our with TVs, and moved on to guitars.

TS could always destroy his equipment after the show like The Who. But, I think they were broke throughout their early years because of it.

I'd just test the flaming waters before I jumped in the deep end of the oil refinery storage tank, and work on bringing back platform heels. That shouldn't be a stretch, since women are wearing six inch stilettos these days.

Your tone never "comes" from your gear, it is from your hands. The gear you use just has a great effect on the final tone.

Most of the sounds I get from my guitar are from my finger placement, pick angle, pick position, fingerpicking with fingers or with nails. Your tone comes from your hands- it's just what you do with it afterwards that your gear can affect.

Your overall sound is influenced primarily from your gear. Regardless of my pick angle or the force behind my pick stroke, the general sound coming out of the speaker comes from how the electromagnetic signal is transduced and modified on its way from the pickups to the speaker. The nuance of it comes from technical things like pick attack, pick angle, and whatnot, but those things are adding nuance to the sound and are not influencing the general sound that my gear is producing.

I'm really not sure exactly what you're asking for, are you asking for technique tips to help you improve or ideas for making yourself sound more like MAB musically?

Hard to explain really, I'd like to improve on my speed a little bit, but I don't really feel it's that important at this stage. I guess what I'm getting at is being able to control my fingers so that I can fluently move between fingering shapes, which is what I like about MAB and Yngwie's playing.

E-12-15-13-17-12-17-15-12~

^Kinda like that sort of stuff. I'm alright at descending and ascending stuff, but mixing it up in places would be a really good thing to train myself to do. Also, I'd like to delve into the Neo-Classical style a lot more, a la Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Joe Stump and to a degree, Paul Gilbert. I feel I've hit a bump in the road with my playing after steadily improving for a good year and a half now, and I'd like to utilise my creativity while still in a shred context. I'm more than happy with my "slower" playing, and I enjoy both as much, and even combining the two a bit more fluently would be good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bikewer

Lighter fluid-matches-feather boa... Worked for Jimi.

Lots of makeup...Rocket-firing guitars... Kiss.

Tape up your nips and chain-saw a guitar in half....Wendy O. Williams.

Oh, don't forget girl's clothes... Always flamboyant.

I like to go for the metalhead look, simply because I'm in an area where Gangsta and Reggae is key, and there's very few of us

Hard to explain really, I'd like to improve on my speed a little bit, but I don't really feel it's that important at this stage. I guess what I'm getting at is being able to control my fingers so that I can fluently move between fingering shapes, which is what I like about MAB and Yngwie's playing.

E-12-15-13-17-12-17-15-12~

^Kinda like that sort of stuff. I'm alright at descending and ascending stuff, but mixing it up in places would be a really good thing to train myself to do. Also, I'd like to delve into the Neo-Classical style a lot more, a la Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Joe Stump and to a degree, Paul Gilbert. I feel I've hit a bump in the road with my playing after steadily improving for a good year and a half now, and I'd like to utilise my creativity while still in a shred context. I'm more than happy with my "slower" playing, and I enjoy both as much, and even combining the two a bit more fluently would be good.

Honesty I think you probably already know what you need to do to get to where you need to be then. You need to practice the kind of ideas you'd like to be able to play fast at a slower speed as ever to gain the kind of control you're talking about.

You might also want to take some time to really study what Malmsteen et al actually do. It might seem simple on the face of it but really it does require a fair bit of practice and examination to be able to do it at all convincingly.

__________________
R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

My work on "The Headless Horseman" is my favourite stuff right now, but I definitely feel that I can improve.

How important is a metronome? Would you guys recommend an electric metronome or an actual one?

Also, how important is gear? I'm currently gasing for a Marshall YJM100 and a Strat of some sort, however I don't want to be just another Yngwie clone.

Any help is hugely appreciated.

Work on two things for starters.Finger independence for the left hand and a super relaxed right hand.90% of sloppiness comes when those two requirements arent met.Gear talk is for procrastinators...sit down and hone your skills even when you watch tv and unplugged.Accept one simple and ugly truth...tone is in the fingers.

Hey guys, it's been a while! I've been practicing some finger exercises and techniques with a metronome, and also jamming with backing tracks to keep it all in a musical context I've bought a new amp, an Ibanez TSA30, and I'm boosting the signal with a Tube King. I've found that messing around with pick sizes is really good, to me 1.5mm is what feels the best. Although I'm stoked about my new gear, I think it was the excitement of jamming on a new rig that helped me get over the bump, as opposed to the gear itself, as I'm now practicing more to hear some sweet valve tone

EDIT: DreamDancer, I know exactly what you mean by tone is in the fingers. My amplifier tone sounds better, yeah, but I still just sound like me. But I'm cool with that